Padres power past Astros for series win

Kevin Acee, The San Diego Union-Tribune on Aug 9, 2026

Published in Baseball

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SAN DIEGO — It was one of those.

Fernando Tatis Jr. launched a ball to left field, stood in the batter’s box with his bat in his left hand held straight out in front of him and pointed toward the sky and watched his majestic home run travel almost until it had bounced down in the second balcony of the Western Metal building.

Then he flipped his bat toward the San Diego Padres dugout and took off jogging.

He had turned a one-run deficit into a two-run lead in the fourth inning that the Padres would not relinquish in what became a 7-2 victory over the Houston Astros on Sunday night.

The Padres also got a home run from Jackson Merrill before Tatis’ blast and one apiece from Gavin Sheets and newly signed Austin Hays afterward.

The Astros got their own home run, which gave them a 2-0 lead in the second inning. They did not reach base after that, as Padres pitchers retired the final 22 batters they faced.

Padres starter Randy Vásquez set down the first 10 of those to get through the fifth, and four relievers kept up the perfect run to the end.

The victory kept the Padres a game behind the Arizona Diamondbacks and Phillies in the race for one of the final two National League wild-card spots.

So this is a good time for Tatis to be hitting like he is.

What he provided in the fourth inning was the kind of moment he used to provide so routinely that bathroom breaks and food runs were planned around his at-bats.

It was the kind of moment that had been lacking in 2026 and, really, for much of the past four seasons.

But after going 55 games without a home run at the start of this season and hitting just four more over his next 40 games, Tatis has homered in six of his past 21 games.

Sunday’s homer was his third in five games.

He also doubled in the sixth inning and has six doubles and a triple to go along with the six homers in the 21 games.

The home run was the 163rd of Tatis’ career, which tied him with Nate Colbert for the second most ever hit by a Padres player. Manny Machado passed Colbert him in 2024 and now sits at 217.

Every run Sunday came via a home run.

Vásquez did not have the superlative command he did five days earlier, when he shut out the Diamondbacks over six innings in his first start in his first real start in more than a month.

But he hardly paid for it, and he was at times as sharp as ever.

But he allowed his first home run since that July 2 start at Dodger Stadium. The two-out drive to right field by Varsho, on a full-count sweeper left up and over the middle, followed a one-out single by Taylor Trammell in the second.

Merrill got one of those runs back when he led off the bottom of the second by sending a fastball at the tiptop of the strike zone over the wall in left-center. Sheets greeted Astros reliever AJ Blubaugh by ending a home run drought at 31 games.

By then, the Astros were finished hitting.

Kyle Hart worked the sixth, Bradgley Rodriguez the seventh and eighth and Jeremiah Estrada the ninth.

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